Besides outright savings, the Bloomberg administration has pursued a second strategy to help dig out of the fiscal hole.

Medical care is a fiscal black hole into which a nation can pour endless wealth.

"She has tried to create the impression that the city is in some kind of fiscal hole."

If the bond markets are at all correct in their expectations of a softer national economy, New York's projected deficit could become a fiscal black hole.

Both moves pushed it further into a fiscal hole.

Outlays would then grow even more rapidly and Social Security would find itself in a still deeper fiscal hole when the baby boom retires.

But to judge by your editorial, what we do is unimportant compared with plugging a few fiscal holes in the city's budget.

They will be heard more and more as state and city budget makers look for ways to climb out of their fiscal holes.

We know that a fiscal black hole is opening up in the area of pension provision and we just cannot ignore it.

But no politician here dares to plug one gaping fiscal hole: the pricing of gasoline at 22 cents a gallon.